Work

The Bluegrass Situation

With the growing popularity of bluegrass and folk in the popular music scene, Los Angeles-based music blog BluegrassLA was able to capture the attention of a small community. In 2011, they partnered with actor Ed Helms and his annual LA Bluegrass Situation Festival, and rebranded as The Bluegrass Situation. They witnessed a trend of upward national growth and soon realized they needed to move on from their WordPress blog to support their increasing number of users and content features.

After amassing a regional following, The Bluegrass Situation reached out to Ashe Avenue in early 2013 with the goal of launching a dynamic, redesigned site — along with a new CMS and scalable server architecture — to coincide with their presence at the 2013 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. The new site was developed on a Drupal 7 CMS to support their various editorial needs, including an interactive calendar feature to showcase music events. Ashe Avenue continues to support the The Bluegrass Situation and looks forward to watching the continued growth of the bluegrass community.

The Creators Project

Born from a partnership between VICE and Intel, The Creators Project is a network dedicated to the celebration of creativity and culture across media, and around the world.

At the heart of the project are the creators, the minds with the vision, creativity and talent to push the realms of art and multimedia. Ashe Avenue developed the Creators Halo as a way for users to navigate their diverse web of photos, audio, video and more.

And that’s only the start. Ashe Avenue also worked on the management of press resources, localizing content for seven languages and streamlining mobile content for event attendees.

Espolón Tequila

Espolón Tequila re-introduced itself to the United States market following a three-year sabbatical, bringing with it new packaging and new positioning inspired by stories of real life in Mexico. To accompany its new look, Espolón enlisted the help of Virtue Worldwide and Ashe Avenue to update their website accordingly.

The new site, in addition to serving as the social media hub in the online world of Espolón, tells the story of the brand’s new packaging and details the distinct tasting differences between their blanco and reposado styles of premium tequila. Great tequila deserves a great website, and we’re proud to have been involved in bringing the Espolón story to life on the web.

Full Bleed

VICE turned to Ashe Avenue to create a blog that coincided with the launch of Full Bleed, a book filled with photography chronicling skateboarding in New York City over the past 30 years. The book includes contributions from over 60 photographers and, according to VICE, “every single skateboarding photograph ever taken in NYC that’s worth a damn.”

The Full Bleed blog supported the book by showcasing photos, interviews with the authors and contributors, and events promoting the book’s release. The blog was developed to allow contributors to submit various types of content with ease and no previous programming knowledge, helping keep the updates frequent and content fresh.

Gap

The "Art of Blue" project, a collaboration between Gap and VICE, showcases the work of street artists with the goal of celebrating "individualism, optimism and democracy." To promote these pieces, soon to be featured during exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Rome, VICE asked Ashe Avenue to create a website that showcases the unique aspects of the art and its artists while also highlighting the global events surrounding the initiative.

As a result, Ashe Avenue created a one-page microsite that can be easily updated using a custom content management system (CMS). To read more about the site and the Gap marketing campaign, visit Market Watch.

Harley Davidson: Dark Custom

Virtue Worldwide asked Ashe Avenue to develop a new Facebook tab promoting Harley-Davidson’s Dark Custom series, a line of sleek, custom bikes aimed at a younger generation of riders. The new Facebook tab showcases the entire Dark Custom line, pulls in tweets directly from the Harley-Davidson Twitter feed and allows users to sign-up for updates and visit the Harley-Davidson Rider’s Edge® Motorcycle Academy.

Dark Custom’s gritty, stripped-down appeal falls directly in line with the type of work we love doing, making the project a personal favorite of ours. Check out Harley-Davidson and Dark Custom at the links below.

High Times

High Times Magazine approached Ashe Avenue with the goal of evolving their company from a print magazine into a viable digital media entity. Over the next several months, Ashe Avenue worked closely with the High Times team to build their digital brand from scratch and design, develop and implement an online editorial platform that would appeal to both advertisers and end-users.

In addition to the website execution, Ashe Avenue provided direction on all business aspects geared towards generating advertising revenue for High Times, including ad network consulting, content strategy, SEO and other means of leveraging the brand and its readership.

With the original business goals in mind, Ashe Avenue created and released a custom, responsive website for High Times in April 2013. Ashe Avenue continues to support the High Times Magazine website and its other digital initiatives.

Illroots

Ashe Avenue launched a new website for the hip-hop news / clothing / video / creative / almost-anything-else-you-can-imagine group out of Los Angeles, Illroots. We worked with the Illroots team to outline an improved UX and design that we could layer on top of their new, totally custom Rails CMS. Keep an eye on these guys - they've got big things in the works.

Kitchen Daily

AOL's KitchenDaily.com provides visitors with new recipes seven days a week. To help simplify the daunting task of uploading content daily, Ashe Avenue redesigned and developed the website with a new, easy-to-use content management system. The website's intuitive social sharing buttons encourage customer engagement while the user-friendly interface highlights the brand’s recipes, images, how-to videos, cooking tips and menus.

KitchenDaily.com was one of three Lifestyle and Content brand websites that Ashe Avenue helped AOL refurbish and launch in late 2012.

Lexus: The Darker Side of Green

To generate buzz for their brand new hybrid, the CT 200h, Lexus asked Virtue Worldwide and Ashe Avenue to develop a website built around both the cutting-edge features of the car and the promotional online series, Darkcasting. The series follows host Whitney Cummings as she explores New York, San Francisco, Chicago and other major cities in the CT 200h accompanied by local guests and celebrities.

The website allows users to customize every aspect of the car in the virtual showroom and view each noteworthy package and technical highlight. The site also boasts an interactive film, Dark Ride, as well as videos and photos from past ‘Darker Side of Green’ events. Outfitted with both Flash and MP4 videos, the site looks just as stunning on your mobile device as it does on your desktop.

2011 Webby Award Honoree for Branded Content

MAKERS

Ashe Avenue, in collaboration with Gin Lane Media, developed MAKERS.com as a video platform that showcases stories from women of today and tomorrow. Ashe Avenue developed the site on a Drupal 7 CMS that allows site editors to easily maintain and update content. Ashe Avenue additionally built out and currently maintains a high-powered application stack using Amazon Web Services (AWS) that is monitored 24/7 for uptime and performance and updated on a regular basis.

Ashe Avenue also assisted with the creation of the MAKERS iOS application by building out a robust API that allows the app to access the website's content architecture to deliver a powerful, rich media experience for the iPad.

NextNewNetworks

TV for the Internet. NextNewNetworks is an independent producer of online television networks. Content Management, Video Streaming, Youtube Channels, RSS, Metrics. A variety of technologies must come together smoothly to make their business a reality.

Ashe Avenue is there to make sure the details are taken care of so that NextNewNetworks can stick to what they are good at — creating some of the Web’s most popular regularly scheduled and episodic programming.

Noisey

A partnership between VICE, Intel and Dell, Noisey is a video-driven music discovery platform that offers videos of local bands performing around the world. Upon launch, Noisey became the undisputed go-to location for professionally filmed live music, filling a hole in the music community that has long gone untapped. Noisey launched on March 18, 2011 in eight languages with 43 bands from 11 different regions.

Ashe Avenue developed the platform that runs Noisey, allowing editors to quickly and easily add multilingual content, and currently maintains and enhances the constantly growing site. The CMS seamlessly integrates videos and content in multiple languages across the world, offering visitors a unique global experience. The videos on the site are shareable via region-specific social media networks and allow users to comment on and discuss each episode.

ReadWriteWeb recently credited the site with “showing MTV how to do music TV online”, while the Washington Post calls it a “gorgeous interactive video site, with a slick interface and over forty short documentaries on bands you’ve only ever heard of if you run with the most global, underground artistic crowd out there.”

Occupy.com

Ashe Avenue designed, developed and launched Occupy.com in preparation for the “American Spring” protests planned for May 1, 2012. The site provides a centralized media channel for millions of people to engage with the Occupy movement. Occupy.com creates a hub for Occupy-related content, including photography, videos and music, to be curated and available to site visitors.

Ashe Avenue felt it important to contribute to the Occupy movement by providing a high-performance site that offers a creative format and supports a wide range of content. The site’s interface, design and intuitive CMS allow it to scale and grow as the site gains more traction.

Palladium Boots

Palladium Boots is a division of K-Swiss with a unique market and style that differs from the squeaky clean image of their sneakers.

When the time came to create the brand’s website, which blends video explorations and other multimedia content with standard fare, Ashe Avenue was the perfect fit. We created a CMS to enable Palladium to easily maintain the site’s content.

We also have a continuing relationship with Palladium to maintain and enhance the website, making sure the site (and their brand) never gets stale.

Playstation

Ashe Avenue worked with BBH to develop a responsive website for the upcoming PlayStation title, "Beyond: Two Souls." The site features a fully-adaptive layout that smoothly adjusts to desktop, mobile and tablet devices. The site is also translated into French and contains an assortment of videos, photos and other multimedia promoting the new video game release.

Who's Your Burger Daddy?

“Who’s Your Burger Daddy?” - a notable tagline for an equally attention-grabbing campaign. The Burger Daddy initiative, created by creative agency and close partner VITRO, was developed to promote Red Robin’s eclectic line of hamburgers for National Hamburger Month. To supplement the series of print, online and television ads, VITRO asked Ashe Avenue to create a website to supplement the campaign and drive online engagement with the Red Robin brand.

The site gave users the option of “Being a Burger Daddy” or “Finding a Burger Daddy” by reaching out to their friends across Facebook, Twitter and email. The site also housed a sweepstakes where participants could win “free burgers for a year,” courtesy of Red Robin. Submissions were collected, monitored and selected through a moderation tool created by Ashe Avenue exclusively for the site.

Over the course of the campaign, Red Robin saw user interaction spike across both the Burger Daddy website and their social platforms. Ashe Avenue continues to maintain Burger Daddy and Red Robin’s overall web presence.

Shutterstock: Offset

Headquartered in New York City, Shutterstock is an innovative technology company that provides creative professionals with the best photos, illustrations and videos from contributors around the world. Ashe Avenue, in collaboration with Melee Media, was presented with the challenge of creating a large-scale photo installation where photos could be actively curated and projected via strategically-placed iPads. The focus of this event was the introduction of a new luxury brand of stock photography, founded by Shutterstock, called Offset.

To support the installation, a system was developed with two main hardware components: a projection system, built on a small, cost-effective hard drive called a Raspberry Pi, and a locally-installed app installed on several iPads.

The projection system ran through nine kiosks positioned around the show floor, with WiFi-connected iPads serving as the main controls for the audience. A steady stream of interest surrounded the hardware installation throughout the night and the upscale event, centered around a complex hardware installation with multiple failure points, ran flawlessly from start to finish.

Stylelist

AOL's StyleList.com delivers the latest hair, makeup and fashion trends. To help fit the endless world of fashion into one user-friendly website, Ashe Avenue worked with AOL on a new front-end, CMS, and server development. The new site incorporates social media enhancements that help visitors share current trends with one click while the simplified content management system enables editors to update the website quickly as fashion trends change.

StyleList.com was one of three Lifestyle and Content brand websites that Ashe Avenue helped AOL refurbish and launch in late 2012.

VICE

From Wikipedia: “VICE is a free magazine and media conglomerate founded in Montreal, Quebec and currently based in New York City. The magazine covers contemporary hipster, indie and youth culture.” We think that’s close enough.

Ashe Avenue developed VICE.com's server architecture and schema, assisted in finalizing the user interface, created the CMS from scratch to meet the diverse needs of VICE site editors around the world, and handled all front-end development along the way.

Outside of VICE.com, we support updates, enhancements, new features, mobile applications, Flash banners and reader contests for everything within the VICE network of websites. If you can name it, we’ve handled it.

Wild Turkey

Ashe Avenue and VITRO partnered to create the "Island of Kentucky," a custom Tumblr experience promoting the introduction of Wild Turkey's newest whiskey, Wild Turkey Spiced. The website features custom artwork created specifically for the site, and encourages users to share, Tweet and reblog content across their social networks.

The GIF-happy Tumblr site is fully responsive and adapts to mobile and tablet devices. We even wrote two pieces of entirely custom code - jqverify and sml-image - to bring the site to life.

Ashe Avenue is a team of passionate technologists and creative thinkers.We partner with media brands and advertising agencies to captivate users through
award-winning web, native and experiential digital campaigns.

Team

John McKinney

CEO and Co-Founder

Matt Murphy

President and Partner

Tim Boisvert

Director of Technology

Heath Beckett

Director of Design Strategy

Cindy Joung

Technical Project Manager

Rob Farrell

Master of Marquees

Natalie Fioto

Communications

Ben Walker

Front-End Developer

Josef Komenda

Front-End Developer

John Himmelman

Front-End Developer

John Crouch

Web Developer

Rob Esris

Web Developer

Shayaan Ali

Project Manager

Jackson Foley

Web Developer

Salar Antinori

Web Developer

Dan Gauss

Content Manager

Kathryn Olive

CFO and Co-Founder

Bruce Olive

Co-Founder

Oscar

Dog

Lupe

Chipmunk Hitman

What's New

Check out Ashe Avenue’s favorite albums of 2014. Per usual, there’s a pleasantly eclectic smattering of artists and genres; better yet, employee participation has reached an all-time high. Since you’re here, take a look at the lists below and let us know whose tastes align closest with your own and respond / share accordingly.

We’re excited to introduce our newest submission to the Apple iTunes Store – ONE+UP. ONE+UP is a native counting application perfect for tracking just about anything. The interface allows you to count an infinite number of actions one increment at a time. Need help tracking your daily exercise streak, the shrimp you’ve consumed in a [...]

Services

Discover

Each project begins with a conversation. We want to know everything about your market, products and challenges. Every website, UX design, mobile app, product and installation is an extension of your brand, and each should be treated with the same precision as any other marketing effort. During the discovery phase, we help you establish your goals, identify your target audience and competitors, and develop the criteria that define the success of the project.

Plan

We provide strategic direction for digital campaigns through the evaluation of brand assets, competitive analysis, market research, and stakeholder surveys. This in turn provides valuable user data, feature prioritization and other insights referenced over the course of the project. Through our experience, methodologies and technical knowledge, we devise the proper approach and guide you to where you need to be.

Design

Understanding and dictating consumer behavior takes experience and skill. How will a 25-year old from Brooklyn interact with our store? How should we setup ads on our mobile site to maximize clickthroughs? How will our videos scale on a tablet? Answering these types of questions leads to a superior product and competitive advantage. From eye tracking to developing responsive designs, we strive to provide users with an impactful experience across all devices.

Build

Because the greatest ideas are worthless without execution, we take pride in converting concepts into award-winning applications. Our experience and understanding of scalability, standardization and future proofing (not to mention other topics tossed around in computer science classes) are essential to every experience that we create. From Rails, PHP, or Objective C programnning to performance monitoring and server virtualization with Amazon Web Services, Heroku and Rackspace, we have the tools to make dreams a reality.

Scale

High web traffic is a “good problem” - if you have the right team supporting your site. We help brands expand to new regions, A/B test new features, and scale their sites to meet higher traffic demands. Our knowledge of performance, iteration and hosting complexities makes growing your site a walk in the park (and makes us good partners to keep in your pocket long after a project is complete).